Struggling in its way to monetize the service and uncertainty in licensing agreement with Indian music labels, Indian music streaming service Dhingana (Dhingana.com) has officially shutdown its operation. According to a message posted by the Dhingana Team on its website, which reads
Goodbye! We hope that you enjoyed listening to Dhingana as much as we enjoyed building it. But alas, all good things must come to an end. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for letting us be a part of your musical moments! – The Dhingana Team.
Last December, one of India’s biggest music label T-Series pulled its licensing agreement with Dhingana. This forced Dhingana to remove a huge collection of songs from its catalogue. From that time there has been report of a possible shutdown of the service, but Dhingana CEO Rohit Bhatia said the service is in the process of restructuring its operations.
With the shutdown, Dhingana’s mobile apps on Apple iTune stores and Google Play store has been pulled. Those who have already the apps installed on their devices can’t play music anymore.
Dhingana was one of the top funded music startups in India, which even raised seven million dollars in Series B funding last October (2013) from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Inventus Capital Partners and Helion Venture Partners. On December (2013) last year it has partnered with Indian telecom operator Idea Cellular to offer co-branded music subscription service,allowing customers to download unlimited music with no data charges.